A new campaign gets under way this week to get disused land in the old London Docks that has been empty more than 40 years to be turned over to allotments.

The issue over the vacant land is on Thursday’s agenda for the Wapping Neighbourhood Forum meeting in London’s East End.

Campaigners from the newly-formed Wapping Allotments Association launched a petition earlier this year which received 1,000 signatures asking Tower Hamlets Council to release the land in Vaughan Way, which they say has remained unused since the docks closed in 1968.

The surplus land close to the John Orwell Sports Centre was handed back to the local authority by the London Docks Development Corporation in the 1980s—but families say it is still not being used for anything.

They sent a delegation to the Town Hall in January, but so far have failed to persuade Tower Hamlets to let them use the land which they were told has been earmarked for a car park for a swimming pool.